What was your big change in musical awareness?

when someone introduced me to theory and explained i could stop dragging my knuckles if i wanted to

 

‘
Not saying this was the only pivotal moment, but when I got my first cassette recorder in the 70s and realized I could record my own stuff...

...oh yeah, and the Beatles...



‘

 

Learning how to harmonize a scale and hearing Blues for the first time. One about 40 years before the other.

 

77' I was a huge Kiss fan, Kiss alive ii came out and we thought it was all that, early 78' Van Halen 1 came out and we never listened to kiss again.

 

The first time I heard Saratoga Swing (1931) by Duke Ellington.
It opened a new world for me, one that I frequent often.

 

Probably The Song Remains The Same.

 

The Everly Brothers I guess ?

 

I was nine years old the first time I heard Queen. That was it for me.

 

Hendrix single “Crosstown traffic”
BTO not fragile album
Beatles Sgt Peppers and Let it be
KISS destroyer

Those were the formulative albums that directed my musical journey. Diversity but kool.

 

I was driving down the road (a little baked) in Seattle in about '95 and "You Can't Always Get What You Want" came on the radio. I had never REALLY LISTENED to it before, although I had of course heard it.

I drove directly to a CD shop, bought "Let It Bleed", and my life was forever changed. I have the Let It Bleed tattoo to back that up.

 

I've got a few, but hearing the Doors blasted in an old Buick, seeing the pavement flash by through the holes in the floorboards after leaving an arcade in Michigan at about 12 years old was cool, man. Break on through!

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The moment I realized that I was playing what was written on the staff paper as I was reading it...at tempo.

It just happened...

 

Took me a while but once I could really hear and appreciate John Coltrane's Africa/Brass studio album, it felt as if I had unlocked a door and a whole new musical dimension revealed itself to me.

 

My second big bang occurred while listening to Echoes for the first time. I had no idea music like that could exist.

 

When I was a kid my dad (who also played trumpet in our family band) absolutely loved Herb Alpert. I had no idea what I was listening to, but I fell totally IN LOVE with that stuff, even before I could even play anything. This is "Taste of Honey"... just great:



And then when I was 13, I heard Eruption for the first time.

 

THREE "items"

Mom and I sat down to watch Ed Sullivan..."ladies and Gentlemen...THE BEATLES!" I was trippin' (as much as an elementary school kid can...)

SECONDLY: Mom wants to expand my horizons, buys Stones' singles "The Last Time" and "Play With Fire" TRIPPIN agin!

FINALLY: 9th grade, leafy green vegetable matter and someone turned on "All Along The Watchtower" full tilt. I WAS trippin'! W O W!

Brian

 

The first big change was hearing Hendrix for the first time when I was 10. That's what got me into guitar. The second big change was about 6 years later, when I was given a copy of Death Individual Thought Patterns. My head literally exploded.

 

November 1984:
Age 14—I saw the original New York Dolls with Johnny Thunders in a “glam rock” documentary on PBS....

June 1985:
Age 15—Got Memphis brand copy of Les Paul TV Jr, Peavey Classic 50, Big Muff Pi and old grey Echoplex at A&A Pawnbrokers in Oakland (my brother drove me) with money from bagging groceries at Pacific Super Asian market in San Francisco.

March 1986:
Age 16—used the power of singing and playing loud fast rock ‘n roll in a band onstage to steal the heart of the girl I loved

October 1989:
Age 19—Met Johnny Thunders while I was stuffed full of hard drugs. He sized me up in a second, told me to “stay away from that business,” gave me a hug and went away

August 1990:
Age 20—Saw and met Albert King....went shopping for a Flying V the next day.

August 1991
Age 21—Saw Miles Davis at JVC Jazz Festival at Concord Pavilion and snuck backstage. I was too scared to meet him but I did look him in the eyes.

He passed away a month later.

 

1980. Dave Edmunds, my favourite, was touring with Nick Lowe in Rockpile, & I had tickets to two gigs on that tour. The support act was unknown American band The Fabulous Thunderbirds with a young Jimmie Vaughan on guitar. They walked out, I looked at Jimmie with his 50s clothes & slicked back hair, & reasoned "rockabilly band - that's cool".

But they weren't. They were playing hard edged blues, but blues different to anything else I had heard before. It took me ten minutes to adjust, then I realised how awesome this band was. Then I learned that they were Muddy Waters favourite band (he would go & see them at Antones if he was in Austin), so I reasoned that that proved they musty be good.

The rest is history. Thanks to Dave Edmunds & Nick Lowe, I discovered a whole new world of raw & powerful blues. So the widdly widdly SCREEEEECH heavy metal merchants passed me by in the 1980s, something for which I am very grateful. I didn't even learn what "hair metal" (WTF? ) was until guitar fora were invented.